lunedì 6 gennaio 2014

Left, wake up!

(thanks
to Grace Anderson's translation, I am able to offer here to your reflection a
post written by Mimmo Porcaro, an Italian intellectual close to the Partito
della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) - a small fraction of the former Italian
Communist Party (PCI). Once upon a time, the PCI was a large political party.
Since 1991 it changed many times its name and split in different pieces, the
largest wreck being the Democratic Party (PD), who managed to become the
relative majority party by transforming itself in what had been for decades the
relative majority party, namely, the Democrazia Cristiana (no need to
translate). This transformation was accomplished some days ago, when
Matteo Renzi became its secretary.

You
can think of PRC as an Italian Syriza. This, at least, would be the PRC ambition,
because Syriza in Greece was able to overcome the neoliberal left - the Pasok. On
the contrary, in the last Italian political elections (February 2013) the PRC took
part in an "incredible" (not credible) coalition of
"left-wing" parties that reached a scanty 2.2%.

However,
although their “numbers” are very different, Syriza and the PRC share the same
pro-euro attitude. Their common political philosophy is: "we cannot leave the
euro because the Treaties forbid it, but we must disobey the fiscal rules of
the Treaties". It is a short-sighted philosophy, a philosophy without logic,
a philosophy made of outmoded idealism, a philosophy that does not reckon with the most
simple facts of economic accounting. In the absence of an exchange rate realignment,
any expansionary fiscal policy in Southern countries, by increasing their imports,
would worsen their external debt position, thereby calling for further
sacrifices for the working class in the future. Besides that, the euro is in
its essence an instrument of neoliberal policies, because its raison d’être is to favour capital mobility, to promote
financial integration, that always and everywhere coincides with labour
disintegration.

In
a public
meeting held on December 2012 I had warned the PRC secretary against the
short-sightedness of this attitude, without much success. He resigned after his
failure, but did it the Italian way, which means that he is still ruling the
relic of his party.

True,
in Greece this kind of hypocrisy was accepted by Syriza constituency. But Greek
people are in despair. A much better example, and one I made during that
meeting, would be the unfortunate trajectory of the Front de Gauche (FDG) in
France. Credited with some 17% of the votes before the presidential elections
of 2012, because of its supposedly critical political proposal – the
euro-sceptic economist Jacques Sapir had cooperated to its economic programme –
the FDG reached a 11% in the first round of the May 2012 French presidential
elections, and fell shortly thereafter to 7%, in the legislative elections of
June 2012.

Why?
Well, I have a simple explanation (I had provided it in August 2011 writing on “Il
Manifesto”). Most people affected by the crisis are opening their eyes, they
see where the problem lies, and they understand the dirty game of the so-called
“critic left” parties: to work as fake, call-bird, parties, that attract some
left-wing voters, and give their votes to the neoliberal left, in exchange for
some favour. This is the job Mélenchon (the secretary of the FDG) did in 2012, and
for that job he was rewarded by its constituency with the loss of a 4% share (going from
11% to 7% in a month)! This is also the job PRC is doing in Italy, where a number of local bodies
are run by PD-PRC governments. For that reason the PRC leadership has no interest
in changing its attitude: as far as the euro regime will last, there will be
always a fair reward for its useful idiots.

No
matter how rational this attitude may be in the short run, it still meets a big
problem: the euro regime will not last forever. The Roman Empire fell, so did
the Sacred Roman Empire, so did the Russian Empire, so will do the Finance
Empire. And the day after people will have to recognize what I explain in my
book on “The sunset of the euro”: namely, that to the extent that “left” is
supposed to defend “labour”, there cannot be a thing like a “left-wing euro”!

Mimmo
Porcaro took part in the PRC workshops on the economic crisis, where he was the
one and only intellectual to report correctly the argument I make in my book.
He promoted, with others, a euro-critical motion in the PRC congress, that gathered 30% of
the votes (interestingly enough, this seems to coincide with the share of
euro-sceptics inside Syriza!).

Why
am I losing time on these details? Well, it is to show you that something is
slowly moving in the Italian left. My address of August 2011, where I implored
the Italian left not to leave the debate on the euro to the right-wing
movements, went unnoticed by the political leaders, but gathered a lot of across-the-board
consensus in the public at large. As we use to say in Italy, it’s never too
late – well: this is a rather universal idiom, I suppose!

The
time of the illogical political philosophy, of the backyard mentality, of the
partisan interests, is over. From now on, every “progressive” party refusing to
tackle the issue of the euro seriously will be an accomplice of neoliberal
policies and of the resistible ascent of the populist right. I am glad and
proud to see that Mimmo shares this view).

Left, wake up!

by Mimmo Porcaro

The
“pitchfork” movement is ambiguous, coarse and largely influenced by the far
right. Of course it is. But if what we have been saying for some time about the
effects of the crisis are true, and similarly our considerations about the transformation
(and disintegration) of the job market, the shutdown of the political system, the
neoliberal nature of the Italian Democratic Party (PD) and the lack of autonomy
of the largest national trade unions are true, then it is inevitable that any
popular radical protest should take on an ambivalent form and become a subject
of dispute between Right and Left about objectives and methods of action. It is
also therefore inevitable that we should witness an increase in protests
without any real conflict, conflicts without any real movements and movements that
are decidedly populist, in the sense of believing in slogans like “send all the
politicians packing”; incapacity for identifying the enemy; a tendency to take out
frustrations on underprivileged groups and a fascination for authoritarian
leadership and government.. It will certainly be a matter of degree, of analysis
based on the facts and assessed on a case-by-case basis, and perhaps the pitchfork
revolt of 9 December will appear to be a particularly ambiguous case. However,
movements can no longer be prejudged without participation or at least an
attempt to participate, to pass among them or without having separated the wheat
from the chaff: without having proposed, from within a definition of the
movements’ aims and objectives. From now on, to snub or to object to a movement
because it smacks of populism will mean to snub or object to any movement, with
the exception of trade union movements which, on the other hand (and this is
not a coincidence) are generally absent, or student movements, which (and this
is no coincidence either) are far from effective.

If
the Left wishes to return to being the Left and to count for something, it must
first distance itself from what now appears to be its prevailing attitude. If
it wants to be a solution for the country, it must first acknowledge that it is
in itself a part of the problem. That is because, some time ago, its majority
component passed to the enemy and it is jointly responsible for the neoliberalist
destruction of democracy and the welfare state (far from being the “dangerous right-wing”…
the most dangerous Right is already here and is already in power: it is called “larghe intese”, it is called “Grosse Koalition”, it is called PD and the
so-called “European socialism”…). That is because the participatory democracy alternative
proposed by the relics of the anti-globalization movement is extremely weak
compared to the pressing need to reform class and property relationships, and
it is particularly incomprehensible for that large part of the population that
has neither the time nor the resources to participate in anything. That is also,
finally, because the same radical Left, perhaps afraid of the consequences of
its own best analysis, cannot free itself from the trap of pro-Europeanism (and
pro-euro). It has not until now offered any neo-socialist solutions capable of freeing
the country from dependence on transatlantic capitalism, nor can it construct a
“national-democratic” discourse capable of preventing the dissemination of
right-wing nationalism. It also seems unable to release itself from the idea
that the single real popular struggle is that of the CGIL [General Coalition of
Labour Union] or other movements which have always been connected to the Left (such
as the meritorious NO TAV [No to the high-speed train] movement).

We
have to stop both the hesitation and the illusions. We have to wake up and begin
perhaps to tackle the main problem once and for all: that of breaking the
alliance between the unionized (and skilled) groups of workers and pro-European
capitalism, and the alliance between the weaker groups of workers and
protectionist capitalism, to construct real employment unity (whether self-employment
or otherwise). How can it be done? By concentrating efforts on breaking down
the oligopoly of the largest trade unions, without therefore always agreeing
with FIOM [Federation of Metalworkers] and without eternally hoping that the CGIL
will come to its senses. That can be done by constructing people’s committees
against the recession (and a “social party” that we usually only talk about)
capable of moving in the magma of current conflicts. Certainly, strong ideas
can be formulated (new socialism, constitutional and democratic nationalism...)
but also ideas that are apparently more prosaic. Understanding, for example,
that the taxation question has changed form, because if the small-time tax
evader of the past defended his wealth by stealing from the welfare state, today’s
tax evader – given the harshness of the recession and the increasing hijacking of
public funds for payment of the national debt – defends himself from poverty by
stealing money from financial speculation. We certainly should not be praising
tax evasion but we must acknowledge that to demand recovery of unpaid taxes today
is to condemn people to starvation. We must recognize that the harshness of the
penalty on the small-time tax evader is the result of the choice of not
demanding money from the large-scale evader. In acknowledging that where the
unionized workers would be offered, instead of the generic fight against
evasion, a reduction in the tax burden and in the fines for “small fry” and a
decided increase in taxation of unearned income and capital gains, the trade
unions would finally manage to attract those different categories of workers: those
who are obliged to register for VAT in order to work (unskilled), the new
generation of self-employed workers and finally the highly-qualified traditional
freelance professions. Above all, policies of this kind would break up the
abovementioned workers’ ill starred alliance with large capital which, reflected
in the incapacity and the guilt of the current Left, now represents the main
obstacle to a democratic solution to the Italian crisis.